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> Second, AMP is bad for security. By design, AMP confuses users about what site they’re interacting with. Users think they’re interacting with the publisher, w

> Second, AMP is bad for security. By design, AMP confuses users about what site they’re interacting with. Users think they’re interacting with the publisher, when in actuality the user is still within Google’s control. User-respecting browsers defend the site as the security and privacy boundary on the web, and systems like AMP intentionally confuse this boundary. They've actually been pushing to confuse that boundary even more since 2019, with their Signed Exchanges specification[0][1]. In essence, when you (unintentionally) visit an AMP page from Google Search, the URL typically starts with google.com/amp/websiteyouwantedtogoto.com. Signed Exchanges is essentially a way to drop the "google.com/amp/" bit, as demonstrated by one of the animations on [0]. Even Cloudflare supported this and rolled it out on their free tier[2]. [0]: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/04/instant-loading-amp-pages-from-your-own https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2019/04/instant-lo... [1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/16/18402628/google-amp-url-problem-signed-exchange-original-chrome-cloudflare https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/16/18402628/google-amp-url-p... [2]: https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real-url/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-amp-real-url/

BrendanEich 5y ago
ICYMI, https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1516492008700796929 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1516492008700796929
- freyr 5y ago
  Does Brave Search not rank slow and bloated sites lower for mobile users? If you do introduce such signals into your search ranking in the future, should we assume you have bad intent?
  - BrendanEich 5y ago
    We do not downrank based on perf tests, but if we did, your bogus tu quoque would need us also to be Google-sized monopoly or market superpower pushing our own AMP analogue that assimilates such “better performing” content into our servers, the better to surveil, control, and monetize. As we don’t propose any such AMP-analogue, and we don’t perf-rank, your selective “you might do it too!” response falls flat.
    - freyr 5y ago
      I was referring more to the CWV thing mentioned in the footnote. It sounds like it doesn’t require AMP.
      - BrendanEich 5y ago
        Did you read the footnote? It noted exactly that CWV does not require AMP but AMP magically guarantees passing CWV score to win monopoly power search placement. Not a coincidence. Please read the whole footnote again and let me know if anything is unclear. If you think this CWV ploy is all fair-play by Google, I have a bridge 4 sale.
37 5y ago
This seems insane and malicious as hell and I can't believe it's being sold as a feature. It's essentially just lying to users about which website they are currently visiting, or maybe I'm missing something.
- nybble41 5y ago
  The original version where the content was served from Google's cache without any cryptographic verification but displayed as if it came from the original site was… misguided at best. It meant that you were trusting Google's servers to only cache the content and not modify it. The new system adds verification that the content is exactly what was intended by the original site, despite being served through a cache, so the user agent is no longer lying about which website the user is visiting. Sure, the data was fetched from Google, but that's not the important part. It's been verified to have originated from the server shown in the address bar.
  - jabbany 5y ago
    Google modifying the content is not really the threat model most people care that much about though (similar concerns exist with other caches/cdns)... Google redirecting traffic to servers they control to mine interaction and interest data on the other hand...
    - nybble41 5y ago
      That was Mozilla's objection to the Signed Exchange standard: you lose some privacy because the cache server can see the page data in the clear, even if they can't modify it. But IMHO resisting Signed Exchange doesn't help here at all, since you gave up that data to Google when you followed the link (which is not obfuscated). It makes no difference at that point what is shown in the address bar, as the page has already been served. Also, since Signed Exchange means you don't have to trust the cache, it implies that Google's cache could be replaced with a different (but still not fully trusted) server behind the scenes without changing the result.
      - 5y ago
kodablah 5y ago
I was hoping SXG would help people leverage CDNs on their mostly-static domain without requiring TLS termination. I wonder if there is enough non-AMP value there to make the spec worth it.
HNHatesUsers 5y ago
arcticbull 5y ago
AMP sucks. You don't need Brave. Just download Amplosion. [1] [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/id1585734696 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/i...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Sephr 5y ago
While there may be valid privacy concerns, SXG does enable completely new P2P and anti-censorship use cases.
anothernewdude 5y ago
I always thought it would be great for malware authors to be able to use google domains via AMP.

BrendanEich 5y ago

ICYMI, https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1516492008700796929 https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1516492008700796929

freyr 5y ago
Does Brave Search not rank slow and bloated sites lower for mobile users? If you do introduce such signals into your search ranking in the future, should we assume you have bad intent?
- BrendanEich 5y ago
  We do not downrank based on perf tests, but if we did, your bogus tu quoque would need us also to be Google-sized monopoly or market superpower pushing our own AMP analogue that assimilates such “better performing” content into our servers, the better to surveil, control, and monetize. As we don’t propose any such AMP-analogue, and we don’t perf-rank, your selective “you might do it too!” response falls flat.
  - freyr 5y ago
    I was referring more to the CWV thing mentioned in the footnote. It sounds like it doesn’t require AMP.
    - BrendanEich 5y ago
      Did you read the footnote? It noted exactly that CWV does not require AMP but AMP magically guarantees passing CWV score to win monopoly power search placement. Not a coincidence. Please read the whole footnote again and let me know if anything is unclear. If you think this CWV ploy is all fair-play by Google, I have a bridge 4 sale.

37 5y ago

This seems insane and malicious as hell and I can't believe it's being sold as a feature. It's essentially just lying to users about which website they are currently visiting, or maybe I'm missing something.

nybble41 5y ago
The original version where the content was served from Google's cache without any cryptographic verification but displayed as if it came from the original site was… misguided at best. It meant that you were trusting Google's servers to only cache the content and not modify it. The new system adds verification that the content is exactly what was intended by the original site, despite being served through a cache, so the user agent is no longer lying about which website the user is visiting. Sure, the data was fetched from Google, but that's not the important part. It's been verified to have originated from the server shown in the address bar.
- jabbany 5y ago
  Google modifying the content is not really the threat model most people care that much about though (similar concerns exist with other caches/cdns)... Google redirecting traffic to servers they control to mine interaction and interest data on the other hand...
  - nybble41 5y ago
    That was Mozilla's objection to the Signed Exchange standard: you lose some privacy because the cache server can see the page data in the clear, even if they can't modify it. But IMHO resisting Signed Exchange doesn't help here at all, since you gave up that data to Google when you followed the link (which is not obfuscated). It makes no difference at that point what is shown in the address bar, as the page has already been served. Also, since Signed Exchange means you don't have to trust the cache, it implies that Google's cache could be replaced with a different (but still not fully trusted) server behind the scenes without changing the result.
    - 5y ago

kodablah 5y ago

I was hoping SXG would help people leverage CDNs on their mostly-static domain without requiring TLS termination. I wonder if there is enough non-AMP value there to make the spec worth it.

HNHatesUsers 5y ago

arcticbull 5y ago

AMP sucks. You don't need Brave. Just download Amplosion. [1] [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/id1585734696 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/amplosion-redirect-amp-links/i...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Sephr 5y ago

While there may be valid privacy concerns, SXG does enable completely new P2P and anti-censorship use cases.

anothernewdude 5y ago

I always thought it would be great for malware authors to be able to use google domains via AMP.